Weekly Brief, 4 October 2021

This week's highlights

Join the new ELIXIR Biocuration Focus Group Kick-off meeting

This Wednesday 6 October 2021 | Virtual, 17:00-18:00 CEST

This meeting is open to everyone at ELIXIR and other invited participants.

Subscribe to the Focus Group mailing list
Calendar and call-in details

GBIF has published a new guide on sharing DNA-derived occurrence data

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) has recently published a new guide on how to effectively share DNA-derived species occurrence data. The guide was developed in consultation with ELIXIR, as well as many other partners.
Read the guide

Recommended reads of the week

PlasmiR: A Manual Collection of Circulating microRNAs of Prognostic and Diagnostic Value

An ELIXIR Greece paper

Only recently have the important biomarker capacities of microRNAs (miRNAs) in blood samples during disease been revealed. Details regarding potential discriminatory miRNAs against numerous pathologic conditions are dispersed across articles, while existing resources that catalogue miRNA abundance in blood samples are not tailored to biomarker research. This study presents the meticulous manual curation of more than 200 articles that specifically interrogate the biomarker potential of miRNAs in whole blood, serum, or plasma.
Read more...

Mechanistic models of signalling pathways deconvolute the glioblastoma single-cell functional landscape

An ELIXIR Spain paper

Single-cell RNA sequencing is revealing an unexpectedly large degree of heterogeneity in gene expression levels across cell populations. However, little is known on the functional consequences of this heterogeneity and the contribution of individual cell fate decisions to the collective behaviour of the tissues these cells are part of. Here, we use mechanistic modelling of signalling circuits, which reveals a complex functional landscape at the single-cell level.
Read more...

Updates from Nodes

ELIXIR-DE releases new brochure

The brochure outlines the main tasks and reports on the latest developments of the German Node.
Read the brochure

Norwegian SARS-CoV-2 sequences now openly available in ENA

In collaboration with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH), ELIXIR Norway has implemented technical solutions that prepare the SARS-CoV-2 sequence data for export to ENA. These efforts are maintained as part of the latest uplift to the H2020 project ELIXIR-CONVERGE.

Did you know? 10% of all raw reads in ENA are now SARS-CoV-2 and the open data doubles every 3 months.
Read the article

ELIXIR-UK announces 7 new services

Last week, FlyBase, NEOF, FAIRcookbook, KnetMiner, COPO, VEuPathDB and WorkflowHub became ELIXIR-UK services after successfully meeting the strict criteria.
Read the news

Updates from Communities

Help the Galaxy Training Network improve their courses and materials

Got a minute? The Galaxy Training Network would like to get feedback from instructors on the use of Galaxy for training, the preparation needed but also on the Galaxy Training Material.

This survey should take less than 10 minutes and all questions are optional and can be skipped. It will help us prioritise improvements to the training materials. Were currently focused on making it easier to prepare and give training.
Take the survey
Help spread the word, share the survey on Twitter

Updates from other initiatives

Join the ISCBacademy Webinar Series

In conjunction with the Communities of Special Interest (COSIs), selected presenters are invited to give a live-streamed talk about their research. Access to the webinar series is complimentary for all. Non-ISCB Members must register.

Alternative approach for discovering relationship between bacteriophages and antimicrobial resistance

With Roumyana Yordanova, Hokkaido University and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
5 October 2021 | Virtual, 17:00 CEST

Injecting life into visualizations for biomedical research

With Johannes Kepler, University Linz
12 October 2021 | Virtual, 17:00 CEST

Metabolic modelling of microbial interactions in microbiomes

With Aarthi Ravikrishnan, Karthik Raman and Dinesh Kumar
22 October 2021 | Virtual, 15:00 CEST

Find out more and register

Upcoming ELIXIR events & webinars

ELIXIR Training Courses & Webinars

The ELIXIR TeSS portal has a variety of interesting events and courses organised by the ELIXIR Nodes. For more, visit TeSS portal

3D-Bioinfo Community webinar: Development of models for protein-ligand interactions

19 October 2021 | Virtual

ELIXIR Events and Conferences

BioHackathon Europe 2021

8-12 November 2021 | Hybrid Barcelona, Spain

Job vacancies

All vacancies are also published on the ELIXIR website (also including those from industry). If you need our help communicating your new open positions, you can submit a job advertisement and it will automatically appear on our newsletters. Go to our vacancy page to submit a job

Bioinformatician at the Biocomputing Unit

National Center of Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC), part of INB/ELIXIR-ES

Software Developer

VIB